There are scores of perfumers in the town of Grasse. The whole region reeks with sweetness, flavoring the landscape for miles around. Just as it attracts many people out of curiosity, though, so many blameless residents have also left the town. Not everyone enjoys the olfactory onslaught that assails the houses night and day. A cloud of cloying odors hangs in a permanent pall over the streets, stretching in an invisible film over the roofscapes. There is little wind to relieve the region. And when a freshening breeze blows in from the coast, it is only so that a new wave of fragrances can waft across the town again.
Coco detects this compound of aromas as she alights from the train. She feels excited that, from this mixture of odors, there might be isolated and distilled a single ribbon of scent that will be bottled and bear her name. She’s always dreamed of having her own fragrance, of sending her signature into the world in this way.
But steady. She’s getting ahead of herself. There’s a lot of hard work ahead of her first.
The next morning, she stands outside Beaux’s perfumery with its square window and unfussy façade. Nervously she consults a piece of paper, making sure the address written there corresponds with that of the shop in front of her. It does. The shop bell clangs loudly. The reverberation continues long after its last note leaves the air.
A man emerges from the back and stands behind the counter. “Madame?”
“I’m looking for Monsieur Ernest Beaux.”
“How can I help you?”
“My name is Gabrielle Chanel.”
The man’s demeanor changes from that of an obliging shopkeeper to that of a humble subject about to meet his queen. Lifting the hinge of the counter, Beaux walks through to greet her. They shake hands with equal strength and for slightly longer than is necessary.
Like Igor, Beaux is a Russian émigré from St. Petersburg and, Coco notices, he speaks French with the same clipped accent.
“This way, if you please.”
He ushers her behind the counter and steers her into the laboratory at the rear of the shop. He is grayer in appearance than Coco had expected. She’d naïvely imagined her perfumer to be a brilliant young man. A paterfamilias beard luxuriates around his broad jaw. His eyes are bloodshot with overwork. But she notes with pleasure his clean hands. A wedding ring glistens on one of his spatulate fingers.
Beaux notes, conversely, that Coco is younger than he had thought, and much prettier, too. He is struck by her professional air and determined manner, her understated good looks.
Coco is dazzled by the whiteness of the lab. For a moment, she’s almost snow-blind. But the sensation does not dominate for long. Immediately she’s overcome by the perfumes as they rush at her from all corners. A fabulous amalgam of scents. She feels queasy, experiencing these interwoven aromas for the first time.
She sits down and looks about her. A continuous wooden surface runs seamlessly around the room. On one side lies a set of burners, flasks, and agitating devices. Here, two white-coated assistants bend low over their retorts and swill liquids in glass beakers. On another, measuring glasses rest next to funnels; pestles and mortars share a space with spoons and rods. Coco approves of this careful taxonomy. She likes the fact that he’s systematic. She’s reassured, too, by the white, germless surfaces.
Opposite, a broad shelf is laden with glass jars. Coco takes a mental inventory. Each container is labeled in black ink: alcohol, volatile oils, and fats in different combinations, plus a liquefied series of natural and artificial odors. A complete lexicon of differentiated scents: ambergris, camphor, frangipani, jasmine, musk, neroli, sandalwood, and violet—scents distilled from southern Europe and the Middle East. The collected sweat of the gods.
Coco asks, “Do you extract the essences yourself?”
“We don’t have space. It’s an industrial process now. We buy them in already refined. Besides, the way you extract the scents is not so important.” Beaux’s voice lowers, hinting at the possession of diabolical knowledge. “It’s how you combine them that counts.”
He moves around the laboratory like a celebrated chef in his kitchen, assembling all the flacons he has prepared for Chanel. She recognizes his ability to pick out discrete scents, to isolate a happy or recalcitrant strand, either to distill it down or siphon it off. It is, she thinks, the facility Igor has: to pounce on the single instrument in the orchestra that is slightly out of tune.
It is all going bewilderingly quickly. The brightness, the scents, and the movement of white-coated chemists mingle and make Coco dizzy. Then, after a few minutes, the men cease moving and stand ready behind her chair. Beaux squeezes a dribble from a pipette into a petri dish. She thinks of the hundreds of crushed blossoms that have gone into this thin distillate, this elixir, to create a single liquid drop.
He repeats the operation several times. Then he lays out the samples and beckons her to test them. The odors resolve in a precise spot a few inches below her nose. She’s conscious of a vaporous welling. Their blended notes rise up.
Now that everything is still, she hears a sound. An insistent hum. The chirr of ceiling fans, she thinks. She looks up, but the fans make too rhythmical and insistent a noise. There is a more frantic and high-pitched buzzing mixed in, coming from somewhere near the window. She looks across. The window is open because of the heat. But behind the frame is a gauze mesh. And beyond the mesh stirs a thick cloud of flies. Fruit flies maddened by the sweetness of the scents. Frantically they dance against the netting, crazed with frustration.
Beaux sees her register their presence. Rubbing his hands together, he says, “That’s how people will react to your scent, Mademoiselle.”
Coco manages a sardonic glance that, through an alteration of her features, becomes a shy smile. “I hope!”
In front of her Beaux sets six dishes inundated with perfumes. They are the color of translucent honey, amber, or weak tea. He dips a smelling strip into the first dish, then wafts it below her nose.
As she inhales, each perfume in turn unfurls like a mysterious blossom.
She quickly discounts two of the samples as overripe. Another is a little bitter. This leaves a further three. The smelling sticks swish like wands below her nostrils. She dismisses another one as merely enchanting, which leaves just two more—numbers two and five—still in the running.
After trying another couple of times to discriminate, she says, “I like them both.”
Beaux urges her to try again. She must choose one. She inhales generously above each sample. Each is exquisite, redolent, and evocative in slightly different ways.
“I can smell jasmine.”
“Yes.”
“And tuberose?”
“Yes.”
“And there’s an animal note in there, somewhere, too.”
“I’m impressed.”
She sniffs, compares, and reflects once more. And there it is. Slowly it comes to her: subtle but glorious, splendid, and, in its mix of distillates, almost divine. She’s never smelled anything like it. A feeling of sickness mixes with desire. And then a strange thing happens. In this state of near reverie, her mind flashes back to the floor of the convent and orphanage in Aubazine where she went to school. Her memory lingers for an instant upon the mosaic tiles in the corridor with their repetition of the Roman numeral V.
She points at her chosen dish.
“Number five.”
Beaux looks pleased. His two assistants straighten. They remove the dishes from in front of her.
Like an aura that hovers and vibrates, the scent envelops her still. She takes a few moments to recover.
“One thing puzzles me, though,” she says.
“Oh?”
“I can’t actually detect any single defining extract.”
“There isn’t any one thing. There are over eighty ingredients mixed in together.”
“Doesn’t that make it less natural?”
“You want your fragrance to last for hours, no?”
“I do.”
“Well, the problem with most perfumes is that they fade very quickly. You have to reek at the beginning of the evening if you want the scent to last all night. This, on the other hand,” he says, brandishing one of the flacons, “doesn’t degrade or decay. And you won’t have to saturate yourself with it either, I promise. It’s much more stable. Just a dab will do.”
She looks doubtful.
“Trust me,” he says.
She agrees to experiment with it on her friends and so conduct a kind of trial. Meanwhile, Beaux is to manufacture a small amount to distribute as gifts. The idea is to infiltrate the perfume into her clients’ lives. Write off the first batch as goodwill. Then go for the kill! She has already made up a provisional list of about a hundred people. They’ll be the first to receive the scent. Beaux is to send the samples, and she’ll have them gift-wrapped, enclosing a little note offering her compliments.
“But before that, I want you to tell me everything. If I’m going to invest in this, I need to learn about the process from first to last.”
“Of course.”
Coco leaves late that afternoon following a detailed tour and commentary and several celebratory glasses of champagne: Krug, her favorite.
She feels a little heady. The pavement beneath her feet appears distant and unreal. The echo of her footsteps seems out of sync with the rhythm of her feet. She clutches a black valise containing two dozen flacons of her perfume. The vials fit snugly into the red velvet casing like the articulated bits of a musical instrument.
She feels the bubbles of champagne continue to rise within and make her giddy. She resists the temptation to telephone Igor. She’s too excited to talk properly. She’d only gush, and he’d think her silly. She misses him, though. In fact, she has made up her mind to donate three hundred thousand francs to Diaghilev for a revival of The Rite. She’ll donate the money anonymously, so that no one will feel obliged by the gift. With the perfume starting up and the salon doing so well, she can afford it. Probably.
Leaving Beaux’s shop, she notices something odd. A squadron of flies settles in a dense vapor about her case. Many of them peel off as she steps into a taxi. A few more flake away when she enters the train. Others fall, exhausted with thwarted longing, as she alights from her carriage. Some are still with her, fiercely tenacious as she returns to Bel Respiro almost twelve hours later. One even clings intoxicated as it is placed inside the safe.
The plucky little insect suffocates in the airless vault. But it dies a sublime death—achingly drunk and happy. Stiffening, its brittle body quickly corrupts, its atoms mingling with the perfume, becoming one with the powdery air.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Following a set of vigorous exercises, Igor springs up from the floor. His movements are light, almost rubbery. And if his limbs are thin, then his muscles are nevertheless well-defined. With a sweet strain of extension, he stands in his underpants before the bedroom mirror, rotating his head, then tilting it from side to side.
Catherine watches him, repelled. His health and vigor mock her in their ostentation. “Is Coco back today?”
“Tomorrow, I think.”
“I thought you were looking happy.”
“I’m happy because it’s a nice day, and I’m alive. Is that so bad?”
“It’s not bad for you, no.”
“Why do you have to be so sour?”
“Why do you have to be so cruel?”
“Cruel? You’re well looked after. You receive excellent medical attention . . .”
“Ha!”
“. . . the children have a private governess . . .”
“And who have I to thank for all this? Little Miss Nouveau Riche?”
“Well, I think you should be a little more grateful, that’s all.”
“Grateful? Fine.”
Catherine twists away from him on the bed. Igor makes as if to say something, then, shrugging, moves to the bathroom. He fills the basin with hot water and hums in a low voice as he shaves. He pretends to be indifferent, but he isn’t. His heart is thumping, and it’s not from the exercise. He can’t stand arguments. He hates being made to feel ashamed. But, at present, their every conversation ends in acrimony. He can’t say anything right.
“I’m going to get on with some work now.”
“Go!” She waves him away. She wishes he’d vanish. His presence is a living rebuke to her. She feels like a prisoner. Even staying in the most cramped apartment, she never felt as trapped as she does now.
Leaving the bedroom, Igor feels as though he is quitting one country and entering another, where the climate is healthier and there exist different rules. It’s as if in crossing the threshold he enjoys new constitutional rights: rights to freedom and happiness; even silence, if he so wishes.
Downstairs he drinks his coffee. The noise of the children playing drifts in from the garden. Combined with the sunlight and the taste of his coffee, the sound seems especially sweet. Coffee he loves more than anything in the morning. He relishes its fierce aroma, its astringency. Sipping it quickly, he peruses the newspaper for the results of the Olympic sports. Though in exile, he still finds his sympathies tend most strongly toward the Russian athletes. He feels a secret satisfaction when they do well.
He works without stopping until lunch. He revises ceaselessly, with his glasses pushed up onto his forehead and a magnifying glass hovering like a monocle over the score. Themes are restated, motifs reconfigured. He explores combinations of chords that converge at different centers, varying the intervals between the notes. Testing various phrases on the piano, he achieves fortuitous collisions on the keys. He experiments with major and minor chords together, relishing the complexity of their moods. He is learning to follow the emotional lead of the music, allowing it to take him into areas previously closed, territories he’s never explored before. There’s a new flexibility and freedom in his composition, a willingness to try things out, a new openness to accident and chance. Maybe it’s better, he thinks, not to be always so in control.
He makes good progress. Always at his best in the morning, he works hard so that in the afternoon he can relax.
Some new books have been delivered: the works of Sophocles, plus new Russian-French and Russian-English dictionaries. Cutting the leaves of the Sophocles volumes, he enjoys the slow tearing sound of the watermarked paper and the leather smell of the spines.
He looks up “coco” in his dictionary. He discovers it is argot for snow, cocaine, and coconut milk and means “eggy” in babyspeak—definitions which cluster associatively around the color white. It also means licorice powder: black. He likes the monochrome simplicity of the word. White, the spin of all colors, and the no-color of black, with a whole spectrum of feelings implied in between.
Toward late afternoon, Soulima knocks at the door to his study. The boy knows that if he sees the door closed, he is not to interrupt. This is a long-established prohibition. But, with his mother ill in bed, Coco in Grasse, the servants busy preparing dinner, and his siblings too torpid from the heat to want to play, he feels drawn toward the forbidden door. His knock provokes a low grunt. Sheepishly he enters the room.
“Soulima? What’s the matter?” Seeing the boy’s blue eyes gaze timidly up, affection wells inside Igor’s chest.
“I’m bored.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I am.”
Igor laughs at his unanswerable logic. “What do you want to do, then?”
Seeing that his father is in a good mood, the boy says, smiling, “Can we have some dancing again tonight, please, Papa?”
“Come here,” Igor says, setting aside his books. He beckons his son over, inviting the ten-year-old to sit on his knee. “Now, you know your mother doesn’t like dancing . . .”
“Why not?” Soulima says.
“Because it makes her dizzy.”
“But she doesn’t have to dance.”
To the children, Igor knows, Catherine’s ailment remains vague. “Yes, but when she watches, it
makes her head spin.”
“Then she shouldn’t watch.”
“I’m afraid she’s made her mind up. No more dancing.”
“But why, though?”
“Anyway, it’s too hot.”
“Not at night, it isn’t.”
“Well, it upsets her all the same.”
“It’s not fair!”
“Oh, come on now.”
“But it isn’t.”
“You know your mother isn’t well, and we have to be considerate.”
Sulking. “I suppose.”
“That’s a good boy. We love Mother, don’t we?”
Speculatively. “I do.”
Startled: “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
Soulima looks solemn. Igor scrutinizes him. Has he guessed? Does he have any inkling of what is going on? Has somebody spoken to him? But he looks so sweet and innocent and shy. It’s just a mood he’s in, Igor decides, nothing more. Still, it’s a reminder of how careful he must be in front of the children. And he realizes at this instant that he absolutely does not want them to know anything about his relationship with Coco. He’d be desperately upset if they were ever to find out.
Momentarily lost for any means of consolation, he offers to show his son some tricks on the piano. He’s coming on promisingly and is the most gifted of the children in this respect.
“No,” the boy says, stiffening. There is a pause, filled by Igor stroking his son’s fair hair. Soulima relaxes. His head falls back against his father’s chest. Igor watches him closely. That same frown. It’s like seeing a picture of himself as a young boy.
“How about a game of chess, then?”
Soulima looks up without enthusiasm. He smiles weakly, then seems to brighten. It doesn’t much matter what he does as long as he can spend some time with his papa.
“All right.”
Igor retrieves the board from a high shelf. A faint marbled pattern runs through the squares. He hands an oblong wooden box to Soulima, who slides the lid across and tips out the pieces. The boy readies them for battle. One black pawn is missing. It’s nowhere to be found. A small brown button functions as a substitute.
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky Page 14